The night passed mostly uneventfully. The worst thing that happened was that we got even drunker and rather silly, ate a ton of chips, and stayed up all night talking. Sam relaxed more than either Sarah or I had ever seen him, and he laughed at everything. I began to wonder if his normally reserved manner was just a front to keep him from letting anyone in.

Towards dawn, Sarah crawled into her own bed, and Sam and I sat on the couch, watching cartoons. We weren’t really watching them, however; we were more slouching into each other and trying to stay awake. We had talked about everything – family, childhood, first crushes - and as the sky grew lighter, I felt that I had really seen Sam for the first time that night.

“Sam, do you need to go home at all?” I asked.

“Some fresh clothing and a shower might be nice,” said Sam with a smile, “I rather smell like a winery right now. The cats won’t care, but the vet techs might look at me askew, and the clients certainly will.”

“Should I walk you back to your car, then?” I said, reluctant to let him go away for fear that he would disappear.

“Sure,” said Sam, “and, if you want, you can come back to the house for some breakfast.”

The invitation was unexpected and caught me off-guard. I blinked at Sam uncertainly, and let the moment register in my brain.

“For real?” I asked.

“For real,” he said, “and after breakfast, I will uphold my agreement to you about meeting my alter self.”

Stunned, it was all I could do to nod, and we left after tacking a note for Sarah on the fridge. The walk back to the office was uneventful, and the sun just rising over the horizon backlit the morning dew on every blade of grass. The air was cool and damp, and it was somewhat of a relief to get to Sam’s car and drive though town with the fresh air on our faces.

Sam lived only a little way outside of town, but still far enough to drive to. I had driven myself out there plenty of times and was always impressed at the long, tall hill that we had to climb to get there, and the grace of the Phillips Academy lands that we had to drive through, past the bell tower where carillons played on summer evenings, and down into the cool swing of the woods behind the school.

As we pulled into the side street behind the Academy’s hidden gem, the Moncrieff Cochran Bird Sanctuary, it occurred to me that it was an obvious place for Sam to go running, and I was amazed that I hadn’t thought of it previously. We could go there, and not be disturbed for a great deal of the time, and the sanctuary itself was amazing. Sixty-six fenced acres of once-cultivated grounds now left to run wild. The size of the azalea and rhododendron bushes was staggering, and some reached taller than fifteen feet in height.

“Sam, have you tried the bird sanctuary?”

“The what?” he asked.

“The bird sanctuary at Phillips?” I explained, “Have you gone running there?”

“I didn’t know that there was one,” he said. “Is that what all that fencing is for?”

“Yes,” I said, “It used to be very well kept. Now, it’s run wild. We should check it out tomorrow.”

He nodded as we pulled onto his street, and into the driveway of a relatively smallish house for the neighborhood. The garage door opened, and he drove the little roadster inside, pressing the switch on his visor again to lower the garage door behind us. We got out of the car and went inside.

The interior of his house was furnished in rustic western, and reflected the culture he came from with its rather sparse décor. Sam slipped into the bathroom to get a quick shower and a change while I sat dozily in the living room, and then he tried to sneak past me into the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge for some eggs and bacon. I got up to join him and watched him cook in relative silence, and when we sat down to eat, I remained in the same tired, contemplative state.

“So why do you eat meat?” I asked, trying to drag myself into more awareness.

“Why do we eat meat if we become horses, you mean?” he said. “I think it has to do with the shape. I can eat meat since I am human in most respects. So when I am human, I eat like one. When I am a horse, I graze. Both are parts of the same whole. We had a couple of people try to figure it out anatomically, but with the changes to all of the major systems, it just makes it more difficult. Our DNA registers as mostly human, though there are a few markers that would confuse a good geneticist, and we can have type O blood transfusions in a pinch. For obvious reasons, we try very hard not to get sick. None of us wants to get that close to anyone’s microscope.”

“Has anyone ever been caught?”

“A few times, but they managed to get away,” said Sam, digging into his eggs. “We had some narrow escapes before the family settled onto the ranch. Now, aside from some rare close calls, no one has been even suspected for years, which is why we need to remain even more vigilant. The family stresses secrecy. We don’t want the humans or the other tribes to get wind of us. “

I took my plate to the sink and rinsed off the specks of egg that still clung to it before placing it in the dishwasher. Sam did the same, then looked at me and heaved a deep sigh as if preparing himself for the inevitable.

“Ok, I promised you that I would show you,” he said. “I am still a little bit uncomfortable with the idea, but I trust you, Laura. Are you up to this?”

I nodded, suddenly unable to speak, and followed Sam out to the backyard of his house. The yard itself was fenced in with a tall privacy fence, and the house beyond it was screened from the yard with a tall stand of trees. The house on the other side was far enough away to ensure privacy and there were some scrubby pines adding some levels of obscurity. It was still very early, only six o’clock on a Saturday morning, but it didn’t hurt to have some extra security.

Sam pulled off his boots, and as he began to remove his clothes, he suddenly flushed, and I took the hint to turn my back. I had already witnessed him changing once, and if he desired a modicum of modesty now, I was not going to deny him that. I listened to him shed his clothes and set them aside, then heard what sounded remotely like waves rippling faintly in the wind. It wasn’t until I felt a gentle nudge at my shoulder that I cautiously turned to find myself face to face with the horse I had seen the day before.

Nothing was different from my previous memory of the animal, and yet everything had changed. I looked at the horse now with the knowledge that this was indeed my friend, Sam. I had a moment of shivering eeriness at the thought that this was actually him and that it was all real. I took a deep breath and looked more closely at the animal in front of me.

The first thing I noticed was his eyes. Sam had brown eyes normally, and in this form, they were almost the same shade. The forelock of his mane draped across them and the white stripe on his nose artistically, and his long, untrimmed mane fell along the left side of his neck, adding to the earlier impression that I had of a Morgan. His coat was a coppery chestnut color, like the color of a bright penny, and his tail and mane were a much lighter contrasting yellow.

I stepped back and around to get a better look at him overall, and he turned his head to watch me, keeping one eye trained on me at all times. As horses went, he was a very nice-looking specimen; again seeming like a cross between a Morgan and a Quarter Horse, and well-muscled. I reflected that Sam in his human guise didn’t look that bad either, and wondered if the fitness of the man translated over to the horse. It seemed to be so, from what I could see.

I averted my eyes from certain areas of anatomy that I wouldn’t have thought twice about on a normal horse, though I could not miss them completely, and finished my tour around to the other side of my friend while he stood and watched me intently. Every now and again I saw a tiny shiver ripple across his shoulder and down his side, and I realized how nervous he must be. I, on the other hand wasn’t just nervous; I was terrified. What if, after all of this, he fled? I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him again, so I schooled my expression as neutral as possible,

I came back to stand in front of him and cleared my throat.

“Is it ok if I…um, touch you?” My voice squeaked on the last two words, and at Sam’s tentative nod, I put out a timid hand, and touched the long line of his face. He shuddered at the touch, and I saw him tense almost as if he were going to bolt. I froze, he relaxed, and I moved to the side and touched his neck, stroking the coarse hair gently. He was still tense but relaxing by degrees, and I also began to feel more comfortable around him.

We stood that way for about five minutes when the phone rang suddenly in the house, and Sam looked at me expectantly. I went to answer it, and by the time I had scribbled down the message, he was reentering the house as the man I knew, clothed but for his shoes, which dangled from one hand.

“That was the office,” I said. “There is an emergency with one of the cats. I told them you’d be right there.”

“That’s what I figured,” said Sam, putting on his shoes. “No one calls me here this early without a good reason. Were there any awkward questions?”

“No, not really,” I said, “Sally paused for just a beat, and then relayed the message like she had suspected this all along. She even sounded cheerful.”

“That is because Sally has been trying to hook us up for the last year,” he chuckled, standing up and grabbing his keys off of the table. “She never says anything, but she has a keen eye for subtle clues.”

“Huh,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “I take it you aren’t going to get much sleep today.”

“No, not likely till later, but I don’t need a whole lot. Would it be imposing of me to ask to see you after I get done today? We still need to talk, and I need to go over to pick up some supplies at the tack shop if we are going to pull this ruse off effectively. I would like your company if you have no other plans.” Sam sighed and looked at me. “It gets hard not being able to talk to anyone, you know?”

He led the way back to the car, and we headed back towards Andover center. He fell silent for a moment and then glanced at me.

“Are you ok with this?” he asked. “Are you ok with me being what I am? I haven’t had time to ask you what you thought of your ‘closer look’ yet. You seemed all right with it all…”

“I am mostly fine, Sam. I need a little adjustment time, I think, to let it all sink in, but it will be ok. How about you?”

“Relieved. Really very relieved,” he said. “In all honesty, I thought one of us was going to run away for a few minutes when you first asked to touch…me.”

“I think this too shall pass,” I said, “Things might not be exactly the same for us, but I suspect they will be a reasonable facsimile of it.”

He looked at me again as we eased up to the traffic light by the bell tower, and said seriously, “I hope that they are not the same.”

I took in the implications of what he said and looked back at him. He bit his lip and said,

“I might be sounding abrupt, but a lot of what I have done over the last twenty-four hours is out of character for me, and I realized this when I showed you what I showed you. Laura, a deep part of me likes you, and that other part of me that I keep hidden pretty far away, that part has been doing what any stallion does to win a mate: show off like crazy and hope that the other party is interested in what she sees. I…am not myself today, and I was trying to puzzle this out all night, back at your apartment, exactly why this is.”

“Sam, it’s okay. If it makes you feel better, I have been thinking about it too. I have noticed that you have been more open with me in the past twelve hours than you have been for the past three years. And your trust is evident, believe me. As for the feelings, well, they are mutual, Sam. I had wanted to talk to you about how I felt a while ago, but you were not seemingly open to the idea. So I didn’t push.” I smiled at him, and said what I hoped would solidify things for him, “The fact of your alter ego does not change how I feel.”

We pulled up in front of his office and got out of the car.

“I hope that you don’t mind walking home,” he said, “I have to get in there and figure out what happened. I will call you when I get through for the day, probably around four. Will you come with me later?”

“Yes,” I said. “I will see you then.”

He gave a little half wave, and strode into the vet’s office. I turned and started walking home, noticing that Andover was just beginning to wake up for the day. I was exhausted, and could at least have the luxury of sleeping for a while, yet. Sleep sounded wonderful, actually, and as I made my way into the apartment and caught the sound of Sarah’s peaceful snores, I kicked off my shoes, threw myself on the couch, and gratefully passed out.